I am using AUCTeX to edit Latex files and use the minted package to highlight source-code within documents. Unfortunately the character $ is still recognized as a delimiter for a math-mode even though it is located within a minted-block and should have no special meaning whatsoever.

This totally breaks syntax-highlighting and makes emacs think I am editing in math-mode although I am not.

Is it possible to configure AUCTex in such a way as to give characters within a minted environment no special meaning? Or do I have to apply some sort of quoting to $?

I'd like to give an answer which is complementary to the one given by @Tyler.

I'd recommend that you set this in your init file:

(setq TeX-parse-self t)

restart your Emacs and open your .tex file again. The difference is that AUCTeX provides a support file minted.el for minted package which does a lot more besides fixing the fontification in environments and macros provided by minted package. You can hit C-c C-e minted RET and will be asked for optional argument and the language for your code; both with auto-completion. Your .tex file could look like this: